The Bend City Council should step away from managing Juniper Ridge, a city board is expected to recommend later this month.

The Bend Economic Development Advisory Board, which advises the City Council on economic policies, on Monday will review recommendations that the council appoint a separate group to oversee Juniper Ridge, develop a new plan for the 1,500-acre city-owned property on the northeast edge of Bend and hire a new city employee to work with the area. The City Council will hear recommendations July 18.

“The recommendation as I read it from the group is that council should step back from the day-to-day management,” said Ben Hemson, the city’s business advocate. Bend acquired the property from Deschutes County in 1990, and the city at one point envisioned the area housing a business park, a university, parks, trails and hundreds of homes. But the 2007 recession disrupted those plans, leaving the land still mostly undeveloped and home to homeless camps.

Oregon State University-Cascades chose a site in southwest Bend instead, and land purchases have been slow at Juniper Ridge.

So far, Juniper Ridge is home to a few businesses, including Les Schwab corporate headquarters, Suterra Corp. and Pacific Power. The city’s been selling off other lots in a piecemeal fashion. And the Bend Park & Recreation District plans to create a 2.8-acre park in Juniper Ridge during the next few years.

Most of the land needs sewer and water infrastructure and roads before it can be developed. The Bend City Council recently approved a $3.2 million contract to start building a major sewer line north of town that will eventually run through Juniper Ridge, and the area received about $50 million from the state to work on improvements at the intersection of Cooley Road and U.S. Highway 97 that will be needed for Juniper Ridge to fully develop.

One thing the working group is interested in is emulating a Portland strategy that establishes a loose framework for what should happen in the area but lets private developers build it.

“Right now, Juniper Ridge has a really specific master plan that says roads go here, utilities go here, businesses go here,” Hemson said.

The Portland model creates a framework that says the city wants to hit metrics such as a certain number of jobs and then lets private developers submit plans for meeting those metrics.

A new plan for the area would likely consider only a portion of the land at first. Only about 500 acres of Juniper Ridge are within the city’s urban growth boundary — the invisible line that determines how far cities can grow to prevent urban sprawl — and of that, 306 acres are in the city’s subemployment zone.

“There’s not a whole lot you can do when it’s zoned exclusive farm use and outside city limits,” Hemson said.

— Reporter: 541-633-2160; jshumway@bendbulletin.com